The Deals That Made the World

We tend to think of our world as being controlled by forces we basically understand-mostly in the form of the politicians we elect and the laws they enact. But in The Deals That Made the World, award-winning BBC investigative reporter Jacques Peretti makes a provocative and quite different argument: much of the world around us-from the food we eat to the products we buy to the medication we take-is largely exempt from any government oversight, shaped by private negotiations and business deals that most of us know little about. The Deals That Made the World takes us inside this world of powerful dealmakers, with 12 chapters that each cover different business deal. We learn how diet company executives engineered an entire industry built on failure; how PayPal came to conquer the online payment world (and the behavioral science revelation that underpins its success); and the plan concocted by pharmaceutical executives to push medications on all sorts of ostensibly healthy people. Peretti reveals a host of fascinating and counterintuitive connections, from how Wall Street's actions on food commodities helped spark the Arab Spring, to the little-known link between the AIDS epidemic in 1980's San Francisco and the sub-prime mortgage crisis of 2008. Throughout it all, Peretti is a sure guide, offering both fascinating on-the-ground reporting that reveals how these deals truly went down, and also a knack for engaging readers and making esoteric financial and business concepts accessible. The Deals That Made the World is accessible, readable, and fun, with many startling revelations about the way we live.